Diurnus
by Lone Digger
Summary: A little slice of life featuring everyone's favorite misanthropic ginger hobo. Adapted from an unfinished work.


It had been a long, fruitful night for Rorschach. Darkness had broken into a grim, cold and misty morning as he had finished his rounds, aching and bloody but victorious.

He ducked into the alley to change into his disguise, leaving his uniform behind but taking his face with him, secreted away in a pocket. He returned to his slum apartment to catch a few hours of shut eye. He cleaned and stitched the handful of minor wounds he had sustained during the night and went to bed with his face tucked safely under his pillow.

Rain began to fall, and together with the din of traffic it almost drowned out the sound of his neighbors, who had either woken up early to fight again or had not stopped since the evening before. The sound of the rain lulled him to sleep. He dreamed of a great flood, one survived only by those who could climb high enough and who had seen far enough ahead to make an early start, the whores and junkies and lechers already waist-deep in floodwaters by the time they realized it was raining at all.

He woke that afternoon, without the need for an alarm, as he always did. It was 2:45, he noted, after looking at the watch beside his bed. Although there were newspapers pasted over his window, he could see that the day had turned into a sunny one. The newsprint cast shadows on his wall, turning headlines to abstract shapes. Many of these headlines warned of mankind's impending doom, and it was this message that he had chosen to spread, though he knew few would heed the warning. He checked under his pillow, made sure the skin was still there and placed it in the customary hiding place as he dressed, ensuring he would not be without it while doing the afternoon's work.

There was nothing to eat, so no breakfast. He stood at the sink, a jet of cold rusty water sputtering out of the faucet, and let the stream run until it was a light yellow-brown, as clear as it was ever going to get. He was loathe to drink the stuff, but bottled water was an expensive, time consuming luxury — and little better anyway, if certain publications were to be believed. Two glasses would fill up his stomach for a few more hours until he could find something to eat, while a wet washcloth soaked in it was enough to clean the sleep from his eyes and wipe away the grease from his mask. He scraped it over his stubble. Shaving could wait another day, maybe two.

He stopped to use his floor's shared bathroom on the way out. He side-eyed his neighbor as he passed her, and she him. Weary from sleeplessness, the fresh bruise ringing her left eye and the aging one around her right bled into the bags below both, and her nose looked like it had been broken almost as many times as his own.

If he had been as naïve as he had been a lifetime ago, he may have been compelled to intervene, but he knew it was futile. He knew that so-called battered women always ran back to their abusers, children in tow if they had them, as they most often did. He had heard her, screaming and cursing and throwing things, so he knew she gave as good as she got, that she was not some innocent victim who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And of course, he knew she disdained him, having the nerve to thumb her broken, bloody nose at him as if HE were some sort of miscreant and she the fine upstanding citizen.

If she had scowled just a little longer, he may even have swung his sign at her.

It was warm out. Not hot, as such, but too warm for all the layers of Rorschach's disguise. No doubt he would sweat more than usual. The sun shone in his eyes, making him squint and hold the sign up in front of them to block the light. He would march until it began to set, mingling with the street preachers selling their delusions and the beggars their sob stories, competing for the attention of people who, when all was said and done, didn't really care about any of it.

If only they could see what he saw. Perhaps he could convince some of them to remove the wool that had been pulled over their eyes.

And if not, there was always nightfall.


End file.
